The Dutch government-in-exile in London reestablished itself on the continent in early 1945 due to Canadian Army and other Allies' military efforts, and it avoided criticizing countries it relied upon for liberation and future security; thus national and local authorities largely remained silent on the bombing for decades, leaving survivors with unaddressed grief and questions, and allowing conspiracy theories to thrive.

Although officials long maintained it had been an "erroneous bombardment", implying Nijmegen was the wrong target, historical research has shown that the attack was intentional, but executed poorly.

A planned raid on the city of Gotha was part of the so-called 'Big Week' (official name: Operation Argument), a series of Allied bombardments on German aircraft factories to weaken the Luftwaffe in preparation for D-Day (June 1944).

[2] At 9:20[5] in the morning of 22 February, 177 American B-24 Liberator bombers, escorted by dozens of P-38 Lightning, P-47 Thunderbolt and P-51 Mustang fighters,[8] took off from RAF Bungay airbase near the Suffolk village of Flixton.

[2] When the group passed over Nijmegen at 12:14 (CET), the air raid siren was activated by watchman Van Os, and residents ran for their shelters until it was safe.

[9] Shortly after, around 13:00 when the bombers had reached about 10 miles into Germany, they received a message from command that the raid was cancelled due to too heavy cloud formations above Gotha for an effective bombardment; the units were recalled.

[2] It was an extremely difficult task to turn around hundreds of planes and stay in formation, leading to a great deal of chaos and fragmenting the group into several squadrons who each sought their way back to Britain independently.

However, a considerable number of bombs fell on the city center in residential areas, destroying homes, churches and other civil targets and killing hundreds of civilians.

[3] After the fact, official Allied sources claimed that the pilots thought they were still flying above Germany, and had misidentified Nijmegen as either the German city of Kleve (Cleves) or Goch.

The German-controlled newspapers also furiously rebuked the Allies and the Dutch government-in-exile, one remarking "The Anglo-American pirates of the sky have once again executed the orders of their Jewish-Capitalist leaders with extraordinarily positive results".

[12] The full scale of the disaster was not yet clear on 23 February, but American aerial photographs taken during the attack that Dutch naval commander Cornelis Moolenburgh managed to obtain via the Royal Air Force left no doubt that Nijmegen (and especially civilian targets in its centre), Arnhem and Enschede had been hit.

The USAAF also refused to send out reconnaissance aircraft for taking photos assessing the exact damage in the three cities, whereupon the RAF offered and executed this task.

[12] The American army command was relatively late in drawing lessons from the disorderly air raid, which had struck an ally's civilian population hard.

[14] Amateur historian Alfons Brinkhuis, who as a 10-year-old boy had experienced the bombing of Enschede on the same day, became the first person to conduct an elaborate investigation into the archives, and interviewed dozens of eyewitnesses.

Furthermore, it was long unclear how to commemorate these 'pointless' victims; there were enough monuments for soldiers and members of the resistance, but not of civilian deaths, and they were never part of any official memorial services.

[4] In 1984, a memorial service was held for the first time, and at the 1994 Nijmegen Storytelling Festival amidst great public interest, eyewitnesses and survivors were given the chance to speak after 50 years of silence.